Corporate governance, ESG and sustainability: the underexplored role of ‘green’ trade marks

Janice Denoncourt

Chapter 19 in Handbook on Intangibles, 2026, pp 327-349 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The trend for companies to adopt eco-friendly brand names and ‘green’ trade marks for their goods and services continues as stakeholder interest in sustainable business performance reporting continues to rise. Trade marks are a fundamental type of corporate intangible asset that tends to increase in financial and economic value over time with a material bearing on real profit and loss, cashflow and balance sheets. The ownership and use of ‘green’ trade marks is an underexplored area of interdisciplinary law, accounting and sustainable deveopment. This transdisciplinary chapter examines ‘green’ trade marks through the lens of the trade mark expert. It is hypothesised that the lack of trade mark literacy and expertise outside the niche trade mark law scholars and professions is exacerbating greenwashing phenomena. We identify that negligible regulatory attention has considered the function of different types of trade marks or relevant aspects of trade mark law in the context of anti-greenwashing. The lack of attention from corporate regulators supports policy recommendations to the effect that greater cooperation between corporate regulators and trade mark granting government institutions is desirable. Trade assets are not without financial (quantitative) and (qualitative) reputational risk simply because they are officially examined and registered. The research in this chapter serves to reduce the ‘green’ trade mark knowledge gap by assisting undertakings to improve corporate oversight of their valuable intangible trade mark assets. Further, undertakings could improve ‘material’ trade mark disclosures and the quality of non-financial trade mark information (NFI) aimed at shareholders (primary users) via corporate reporting. Other benefits from greater awareness of trade mark law include undertakings being better placed to recognise opportunities to internally generate new or acquire existing ‘green’ trade marks to support their branding corporate strategies. Through a dual thematic framework comprising corporate governance systems intersecting with trade mark law, this research contributes original knowledge by analysing the interrelationship between those fields.

Keywords: Corporate governance; Directors; Disclosure quality; Greenwashing; Trade marks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035306367
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035306374.00026 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22045_19

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().